by Baird Wells
“But you’d have taken her without reservation, had she been a stranger? Hair splitting.” Bennet's handsome features bent into a scowl, a perfect imitation of their father's, and he waved a hand. “I know you enjoy torturing yourself over everything, but it sounds as though you had some help.”
He had. Her hands inside his coat, that look in her eyes haunting him for days now. Spencer groaned, sinking deeper in the chair. “You’re muddying the water.”
“Stop being such a baby,” snapped Bennet, draining his tumbler. “Just go and speak with her.”
“About what? Waking up in a sweat, or the poor fit of my breeches when she comes to mind? Which is more appropriate conversation?”
It was a genuine question. John had sent an invitation every day, and he was running out of reasons to decline. What would he say to her? Had she puzzled him out? Could they sit stiff-backed across the table from one another and make mindless conversation?
Bennet shrugged, propping up his boots and folding his hands, a posture that signaled return fire. “How true and straight your infantry marches. How many medals you have.” He winked. “The size of your artillery.”
“Stop speaking, Bennet.”
Bennet shook his fist. “Just go to John's, see her. This is beyond ridiculous. See what happens, what she says. So you'll have to press some hands and suffer adulation.” He snorted and took a long draw from the bottle. “You'll manage.”
Spencer admitted that, despite fifteen years between them, his younger brother was sometimes very wise. Admitted it silently, of course. Draining his own glass, he crossed his arms. “Fine. I shall go. But not because you’ve convinced me. I lent John a saddle and I’d like to retrieve it.”
Bennet’s grin was victorious. “That's more like it. Stick to the stables, and stay clear of the garden.”
* * *
Alix stretched beneath her favorite ivory quilt, raking a fingernail over its red and coral roses, blinking up at the canopy. It was something from home to make her comfortable in England, though she wasn’t exactly eaten up with homesickness just now.
She pressed fingers to her lips, smiling, and stretched farther. Her handsome stranger had occupied every waking moment since the ball. At first she thought he must be an acquaintance, someone to whom John had already introduced her. Surely no stranger would touch another with such familiarity, would be so bold. How wrong she’d been. She wasn't well connected to many people in England, certainly none so tall, so quick with a heart-stopping grin, with dark hair as thick and crisp as it looked. Not any man she could call to mind.
She closed her eyes and drew him up in her mind. His eyes might have been green or gray; in the ballroom she’d had no question of their color, but garden shadows and his mask’s border had muddied her recollection and made them a shade deeper. Artists hands, or a sculptor; his long fingers had learned her rather than simple touching, explored with a roughness that had made her wonder at a gentleman with a laborer’s hands.
It had been on her lips more than once, to question John and try to discover the man's identity, but she had resisted. Sighing, Alix wriggled against her pillows. She didn't want to know, not really. That would spoil the mystery, and mystery was all she had now.
So, what if they met again? That question had plagued her too, and she knew the answer. There would be no carrying on as they had at the masquerade. It had been a single moment, magical and impulsive, and over. She beat a dimple into her hapless pillow and wriggled onto her side.
Damn John for interrupting.
Making love with a rogue in a garden's inky depths. It only existed in the horrid novels ladies hid beneath the cushions until they were alone. It had been unlike anything she’d done before, and she had been thrilled to come so close, the most fun she'd had in thirty-two years. After, she had expected shame to intrude, some embarrassment at what she’d been willing to do. It never came; her only remorse was over being interrupted.
She yawned. John, you bastard.
No matter how much she worked up her nerve, something always spoiled the fun. The horse race from Parson’s Green to the bridge, or the time she’d smuggled French brandy into the house, or even the simple act of engaging the native women on a scouting trip back in America. Some prying eye, some wagging tongue, or some crease-faced goodwife was always there to clear their throat or whisper damning gossip to Paulina.
She recalled the sailing trip and shifted uncomfortably against the mattress, pulling her quilt to her chin. Just to see the fleet come in, she had lied to Paulina, with her scant savings sewn into the lining of her dress. Had her sister-in-law already known she intended to elope with Edward? It wouldn’t have surprised her to find that Paulina’s father, Silas, had had her followed by his men, had been watching and digging.
Her face burned at the memory of being escorted through the crowd at the docks, Edward shouting behind her that he loved her, and that she did not have to go. Alix rubbed a fist, smearing tears over tired eyes. She should have stayed on the ship with Edward, should have found the spine to fight Silas’s and Paulina’s threats. It was simple to blame tattling neighbors or a disapproving parson, but was she really the one at fault? When had she ever had the courage to run and keep running until she outpaced them?
Shifting to get comfortable, Alix decided that she was too tired and too resigned to answer the question.
She should count her luck. It was only their first week in England. She had already laid money on an investment and made a very lasting memory. With a whole spring and then summer ahead, who knew what else could happen?
CHAPTER THREE
Broadmoore, The Hastings estate -- Derbyshire
Spencer hadn't appreciated how much he hated John’s house until his last deployment through Europe. As ruins went, the house would be an excellent place to visit: a wide lawn, a long pool framed by the boughs of newly green oaks. But it wasn’t a ruin, unfortunately. It was a functioning house and grounds, despite having falling into disrepair a century before. Broadmoore Abbey's crumbling skeleton was a fine landmark but a derelict residence. The house was drafty, dripping, and generally uncomfortable. Its cavernous fireplaces and furnishings would have been in vogue for the last Tudor king. The whole mess had been saddled to John by a father set on keeping tight reins on his heir, the same man who had reputedly sent his own sister running for the colonies, never to return.
In an accident of agreeable circumstances, that sister’s children, Chas Paton and his sister Alexandra, were eager to see their homeland. John was anxious for the financial opportunity they offered, happy to make his kin welcome. Chas Paton had managed his family's shipping business to a peak of success and had money -- coin John could use to dig himself out from under Broadmoore. In turn, John had connections that the Patons were eager to make use of.
Spencer sighed and stretched his legs farther into the carriage's foot well, longing to be home. Whatever good the army had brought him, it had also meant long nights in wind and rain with thin blankets and worse rations. He was done with all that; he wanted a roaring fire, a sturdy chair, and the nearly endless parade of good food from his own Oakvale kitchens.
John was a friend, though, and he would tolerate Broadmoore for the company. Intriguing company now, he amended. Mrs. Rowan would be there, too. After Bennet’s prodding, he’d found renewed courage, so why was he struggling now with seeing her?
Because he didn't want to meet her, to know her. The real her. He wanted to preserve quite possibly his only impulsive decision outside of a battlefield. Her voice wouldn't be as deep and rich as he'd imagined. There would be a whining point to the sound of her words. She would be too well read to be talked to or so vacuous as to be limited to parasols and ribbons.
Spencer laughed at himself, looking out the window at his waiting hosts. Age had made him impatient, rigid. Bored. Something in Mrs. Rowan's eyes, a clever playfulness when he had taken her hand, scolded that he was wrong to worry. Spencer rejected his fear and brushed aw
ay a disappointment which promised that reality could never equal his imagination.
The carriage lurched to a stop. Spencer bounded down, planted his hat back on his head and raised a hand to John and Laurel where they waited at the yard's edge.
He started forward, girding himself. Once more into the breach.
* * *
Seated before a frightened little desk in the small parlor, Alix hunched and braced elbows as she wrote, and tried ignoring an aching back and jostling surface in equal measure. The desk’s joints creaked in protest each time she dipped her quill. It was impossible to give her correspondence the attention it deserved while not panicking under the belief her work surface would collapse and summon the very people she’d been avoiding. The last thing she needed was Paulina catching on to her scheme.
Second to last was Chas. At the thought of his name she stabbed the quill and tapped it with violence, earning a cry from the ancient furniture. Her brother. Her own brother, the traitor. It was enough to swallow, that he’d married into a family bearing them so much ill will, allowed his wife and father-in-law dominion over his person and business. Subjecting her to it…
She paused, drew a breath and held it, quill suspended long enough that a drop of ink fell onto her letter. She didn’t bother blotting up the stain, determined for the first time in years to follow her thoughts on Chas. There were no memories of him during their father’s final years; why had she expected more afterward? Because she had told herself then, as much as before and a long while after, that he would grow up. Without Father to take the lead, Chas would become a man, set Paulina in her place, and break Silas’s grip.
Evidence to the contrary had begun with a small thing; Chas’s promise to hold her money from the sale of their family home. Just, he had promised, until she and Mister Meacham could settle what to do with it.
Emily Aldridge’s body had been found washed up on the river bank just a few weeks later. Alix recalled it well, the tragedy coming so close on the heels of her own father’s death. The pretty young thing of eighteen had gone missing on a walk back from town, and groups of men had gone out each day from sun up to sunset looking for her. It was agreed that an animal must have gotten her, a wolf or coyote.
Alix shivered and drew her shawl tighter. Doctor McCraddock’s examination had said otherwise. Poor Emily had been beaten, clubbed to death. Though the town agreed that no one inside its borders could be capable of such a heinous crime, doors were bolted at night and no lady walked anywhere alone. Some families didn’t allow their daughters out of doors. Alix recalled how close in age she’d been to Emily, three or four years, and how she had wondered to Chas through his newspaper that she’d walked to town often, even at dusk, and never worried.
And then it had all become a horrible memory, until months later when she had asked Chas to have her money transferred to Mister Meacham. Weak agreement had escalated to refusal and then an eruption concluding with Chas’s admission that he’d been forced to give her three thousand dollars to Silas Van der Verre.
Why? Why had he given that man money which was rightly hers? Alix rested her quill in the inkwell and massaged a drumming temple. She’d been so naïve in those days. A wide bruise had marked the length of Chas’s jaw, running a spectrum from plum to rust and finally to a slow-fading yellow, a shape remarkably like those found on Emily. Scratches: he had tried to conceal them by the height of an over-starched cravat. She had accepted his story of a dull razor. Screaming matches had rattled her door from Chas’s bedchamber at night, Paulina reaching an octave so piercing that it had torn them in half and left her brother in a separate bedroom for good.
Silas’s hasty replacement of a once-favorite walking stick.
Emily’s bloated belly, filled more with child than river water.
If she had known, had allowed herself to believe, she would have been too afraid to ever defy one of Silas’s edicts. She had been bright and colorful, brave in those days; Alix resolved once more that her taste of freedom would be Silas’s downfall, not her own. She had tasted a life without fear.
She would have it again.
Determined, Alix claimed the only weapon available: her quill. Tapping it off and willing the sad desk to be as strong as she was, she signed yet another offer for shares of Van der Vere Shipping, an offer at a price too high to be ignored.
CHAPTER FOUR
Broadmoore’s drawing room boasted more people than he would have liked, but not as many as he’d expected. In a revelation, Spencer realized it wasn’t company that he minded. Bennet had throngs of loud, obnoxious young bucks in for cards and drink nearly every night outside of the Season, and it hardly figured on his daily existence. He had guests of his own and no qualms being a guest elsewhere as long as the lodgings and company were good.
No, it wasn't the company, it was the questions. Eager and bright eyed, desperately patriotic and painfully misguided, men and women hounded him at tea, at dinner. Tell us about your infantry charge. How many French did you kill during the siege? How many times were you wounded? What did the Prince Regent serve you for dinner?
Bland enough, and he didn’t fault them for their curiosity, just for the memories that it stirred. There was no recalling an allegedly brilliant charge without also remembering the dead and mangled, their frozen screams and wide blank stares. Explaining that the siege had cost him Leighton Powell and nearly John, his two closest friends. He’d mourned in a foot of mud and shite, grief dulled by whiskey and a stomach full of moldy biscuits, certain of bleeding to death from a musket hole in his side.
It would be impolitic to say that the prince was a pompous bore, rumpled and a bit undignified, with a mind nearly as scrambled as his father's. No one wanted to hear the bloody or the embarrassing details, and he was a saner man for not having to recount them.
Spencer claimed a lone ribbon-back mahogany chair by the fireplace, watchful for anyone who recognized him with the telltale gleam of an unanswered question in their eyes. As he sat, he winced at a lack of stuffing in its fine blue silk cushion, and without warning felt old. Old and tired and cantankerous. Knees which had led the uphill charge at Toulouse protested an hour of standing in London company. In winter or poor weather, the wounds which had made him famous throbbed with the price of victory. His hearing, which had somehow survived the best efforts of his riflemen and heavy artillery, was grated on by the drone of gossiping voices. No, fame was not for him. Glory hoarding was for the younger, more brash among the army. For Bennet.
John appeared, handing him a glass of port without asking and without needing to. “Knock it back quick,” warned John, “before the ladies take notice.”
“Here’s to the rules,” whispered Spencer, briefly raising his drink in salute to a social convention they’d broken on more than one occasion. Imbibing in the company of ladies was only bad form if you were caught; he and John had shaken hands on it.
Down went the port, warm and sweet, coating his throat like pungent honey. John snatched the glass almost before it was clear of his lips, hurrying back to the cabinet in order to conceal their evidence. Spencer fought a smile, leaning into the chair’s sturdy frame to survey the room, letting the wine go to work.
John’s lovely wife Laurel, small and willowy with a mound of auburn hair, flitted along the horseshoe arrangement of her guests. Chas Paton, seated near the center, held a decent resemblance to his cousin John, with the same shade of blond to his hair and same upturned nose, neither of them particularly tall but both fit and with a lot of bearing. Chas’s wife, Paulina held court beside him, narrowed gaze weighing those around her. Taller than her husband by a finger or two, her ashen locks and dark eyes might have been exotic, framed by the sharp and invading European angles of her face and limbs. A sniff when she found his eyes on her and something withheld in their flat brown depths heightened his distaste for the woman.
Mrs. Paton had already managed to make a poor impression on Laurel, and that had made a poor impression on him. Laure
l was a mutual responsibility of sorts, and his own responsibility should his friend be killed. She filled the role of hostess at his estate now and then, saw to his domestic staff, and nattered about his health, his exercise, and his love life with equal concern. Someone had to, he supposed, and bless her for it. She was altogether lovely and Spencer treasured her almost as much as John. Anyone who treated her poorly was suspect, as far as he was concerned.
Finishing a study of the room, he frowned. His raven was nowhere in sight, a revelation which was more disappointing than he had expected. At least a good look at her, with no mask and in daylight, would assure him that she was not as tempting as he remembered. This thought occupied him while John muttered introductions, most of which were not necessary, and everyone casually took each other's measure.
“Mrs. Rowan.” Spencer had thought the words, but didn't realize he had spoken them aloud until several sets of eyes snapped his way.
John leaned in. “What's that, Reed?”
He met their gazes, swallowing to recover. “Mrs. Rowan. Is she not also visiting today?”
“She’s in the small parlor,” offered Laurel with a meaningful glance at Mrs. Paton. “Writing a letter. Would you like me to introduce you?”
“Here I am. Forgive my tardiness.”
The voice startled him. He sat up quick enough to bounce the chair legs and turned in his seat.
For a long moment he stared, nearly certain she could not be the same woman from the garden. She was taller than he remembered, and older. Thirty at least, though it was her carriage rather than looks which gave her age away. A modestly cut pale mint gown hugged long arms and draped longer legs, still managing to hide a body he thought he remembered well. Her hair was the right shade of silky ink, but its mass was harnessed into a tight knot at her crown. She was not dowdy or plain. She was lovely, in fact, but entirely different from his recollection.